In an interview with Arizona Senator John McCain on Monday's NBC Today,
co-host Savannah Guthrie attempted to dismiss growing evidence that the
IRS scandal rocking the Obama administration went as far as Washington
D.C.: "Darrell Issa...says that his gut tells him this goes beyond the
Cincinnati office....He released excerpts of some e-mails that might
support that theory, they're not conclusive. Do you take the
Inspector General of the IRS at its word saying this – this was
something that happened in Cincinnati and went no further?" [Listen to the audio]

In a report prior to the interview, White House correspondent Peter
Alexander revealed the supposedly "not conclusive" evidence: "Issa
released excerpts of interviews with IRS workers in Cincinnati, that he
says show the targeting is tied back to Washington. Including this
exchange: 'Did your supervisor give you any indication of the need for
the search, any more context?' The employee's reply, 'He told me that
Washington, D.C. wanted some cases.'"

If that wasn't conclusive enough for Guthrie, there was also this May 28 report from NBC News investigative correspondent Lisa Myers:

Additional scrutiny of conservative organizations' activities by the
IRS did not solely originate in the agency's Cincinnati office, with
requests for information coming from other offices and often bearing the
signatures of higher-ups at the agency, according to attorneys
representing some of the targeted groups. At least one letter requesting
information about one of the groups bears the signature of Lois Lerner,
the suspended director of the IRS Exempt Organizations department in
Washington.

Myers posted that significant development on NBCNews.com, but has not been permitted to report the news on-air for the network.

A recent scoop
by correspondent Michael Isikoff on Attorney General Eric Holder
personally approving the investigation of Fox News journalist James
Rosen was similarly censored from NBC's airwaves.

Here is a portion of Guthrie's June 3 interview with McCain:

7:09AM ET

GUTHRIE: Senator John McCain is just back from his trip to Syria,
where he met with opposition leaders. Senator McCain, good morning to
you.

JOHN MCCAIN: Good morning.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: New Troubles for the IRS; McCain on Agency Investigation]

GUTHRIE: I want to talk about Syria in a moment. But let's pick up
where Peter [Alexander] left off, and that is this investigation into
the IRS. Darrell Issa, the head of the Oversight Committee in the House,
says that his gut tells him this goes beyond the Cincinnati office,
into Washington. He released excerpts of some e-mail that might support
that theory, they're not conclusive. Do you take the Inspector General
of the IRS at its word saying this – this was something that happened in
Cincinnati and went no further?

MCCAIN: I think that that's the reason why we ought to have hearings,
in fact maybe even a select committee may be called for with – given the
questions surrounding this investigation. So I think we ought to wait
and see how events unfold. It certainly, when you look at the people
that were targeted, it might have been something different than
accidental, but I think we ought to have hearings and I think that there
may be an argument for a special council here, but let's, I think wait
and see.

GUTHRIE: I have to ask you about this latest video that's come out of
IRS employees at an employee event learning to line dance, this is at
taxpayer's expense. Your reaction to seeing that?

MCCAIN: You just wonder why do they – why do they keep doing this
stuff? It's just, it hurts their credibility enormously. Suspicions
confirmed about what federal employees do. And we all know that there
are many, many, hundreds of thousands of dedicated federal employees who
work hard every day for us.

(...)

-- Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Kyle Drennen on Twitter.

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